opinion n Editor's note: These endorsements represent the views of Forum Communications, the Enterprise's parent company.
For six years, Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the first Minnesota woman ever elected to the Senate, has stood strong with jobs-hungry Minnesotans and with jobs-producing Minnesota...
Park Rapids, 56470

For six years, Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the first Minnesota woman ever elected to the Senate, has stood strong with jobs-hungry Minnesotans and with jobs-producing Minnesota businesses. She consistently has been in our corners. On Nov. 6, voters who are eager like she is for our nation to "move forward" again can be in her corner, re-electing her and sending her back to Washington to continue to work and to fight on our behalf.

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Her first term in D.C. has been filled with working and fighting -- and successes. Like bringing broadband to rural Minnesota. And curbing excessive price speculation in oil markets, something that artificially drives up gas prices. And encouraging international tourism by shortening the excessively long time it takes for foreign travelers to receive U.S. tourist visas. That effort is a potential boon for tourist destinations as foreign tourists are estimated to drop $5,000 or more every time they travel to the U.S.

In addition, Sen. Klobuchar has worked effectively with Minnesota's other representatives in Washington -- namely fellow Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken and Republican U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack -- to make sure U.S.-made steel is the steel that gets used in federal and state transportation, public-works, bonding and other projects that receive public funding, as well as in the production of metal-armor plates for our military.

Klobuchar's Republican opponent is Kurt Bills, a straight-talking city councilor and high school economics teacher from Rosemount.

Like Klobuchar, Bills talks about a way forward. His includes an unspecified "great compromise."

Hers includes an educational system that fills the jobs of tomorrow. And it includes fiscal stability.

We also think U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack should be re-elected this fall.

Like so many of the news releases, protest signs and attack ads before it (and, unfortunately, still to come), the information painted an ominous picture. Doom and gloom stuff.

This time, Cravaack was rewarding multinational corporations that ship jobs overseas. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were being lost to "Cravaack's plan," the Sept. 27 statement from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee claimed.

"That shows how out of touch these guys are," Cravaack told a member of the Duluth News Tribune editorial board. He was in support of a simpler, flatter tax code, he explained, because the U.S. has one of the highest tax rates in the world right now and large corporations are fleeing the U.S. -- have been for years -- in favor of tax-friendlier shores abroad.

"We have to incentivize these businesses to come back," Cravaack said. "They want to come back. ... But they just can't do it. They have to initiate and create jobs where it's easiest to do so. So we have to partner with businesses and corporations to bring them back to the U.S."

So a simpler, flatter tax code isn't meant to reward any corporation for shipping jobs overseas but is a way to win them back home -- and "to get the United States competitive again," Cravaack stated.

A sensible explanation, the likes of which unfortunately has had to be a part of Cravaack's re-election campaign this fall. Not only is he running against a Democratic opponent, Rick Nolan, whose last foray into politics was as a congressman more than 30 years ago in the wake of the Vietnam War, but he also has been running against a machine (or several of them) hellbent on pumping out misinformation, half-truths and ugliness.

Cut through it, though, and the thing that becomes clear for voters in Minnesota's 8th Congressional District is that the passionate, strong and effective leader they elected two years ago is the same congressman they can re-elect on Nov. 6. Cravaack went to Washington to stand up to wasteful government spending while standing with his constituents back home. He has done exactly that. And done it well.